Minter Dialogue with Edward Nelson

For this episode #628, I sat down with Edward Nelson, a unique blend of lawyer, thespian, and change facilitator. We explore the power of storytelling, particularly through Shakespeare’s works, in driving organizational transformation. Edward shares insights on authenticity, polarities, and the challenges of self-awareness in leadership. We discuss the importance of embracing risk and discomfort in personal growth and organizational change. Edward’s approach combines empathy, humor, and archetypal storytelling to help leaders navigate complex transitions. Our conversation touches on the nuances of identity, the limitations of empathy, and the value of creating safe spaces for teams to think differently. Edward Nelson’s multifaceted background brings a fresh perspective to the art of facilitating change in both individuals and organizations.

To connect with Edward Nelson:

• Check out Edward’s main site here
• Check out his Facilitating Change blog here
• Find/follow Edward Nelson on LinkedIn

Further resources for the Minter Dialogue podcast:

Meanwhile, you can find my other interviews on the Minter Dialogue Show in this podcast tab, on my Youtube Channel, on Megaphone or via Apple Podcasts. If you like the show, please go over to rate this podcast via RateThisPodcast! And for the francophones reading this, if you want to get more podcasts, you can also find my radio show en français over at: MinterDial.fr, on MegaphoneFR or in iTunes. And if you’ve ever come across padel, please check out my Joy of Padel podcast, too!

Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign-off music is “A Convinced Man,” a song I co-wrote and recorded with Stephanie Singer back in the late 1980s (please excuse the quality of the sound!).

Transcription courtesy of Flowsend.ai, an AI full-service for podcasters

Minter Dial: Ed Nelson. I have to believe, even though I’ve done many, many guests, this is the first time I have not just a lawyer, but a thespian trained as an actor. In your own words, who is Ed Nelson?

Edward Nelson: Well, great question. I think we’re all trying to figure that question out, aren’t we, as we go. Who am I? Who am I today? I think I. I’ve been doing a little bit of sort of exploring sort of the relationship between, you know, my own, my own self and my own identity and then, and then change. And on my run this morning, it was beautiful day in Dartmoor, going out over the hills and having a look at the view and, and the sun is shining and it’s just a beautiful autumn, crisp, sunny day. Love that. And you know, I’ve been through quite a lot of big personal changes in the last year or so and, and trying to navigate what’s the right, what’s the right thing for me. And so, who am I, you know, is if I go in a moment-to-moment thing, you know, we can all talk about our lists of things that, you know, I’ve got a master’s in psychology, I’m a systemic Consellator, I’m an ICF coach, I’m a business coach. I work with teams, I facilitate teams. I still do plays, although I don’t really work as an actor anymore. That those, those are all parts of me. So, we can look at the parts of me, but there’s another part of me which is the probably most important part, which is my own unique journey and way of being in the world. And you know, nobody else can take, nobody else can define that and nobody else can. So, we could talk about who I am, but there’s a, there’s an, a never-ending journey of finding out who this person, who, who am I and who am I to take care of? Who am I in this world that goes on this, these adventures and this work and these relationships and these things. So, I don’t know. That’s a very big question. Mint has to get, to get us going.

Minter Dial: Well, it is, and I ask it every time because I think it’s fundamental to the work that you and I do, which is to bring about change. And my observation is that most people have a general idea of who they are. They typically have the fallback, as you say, like an MSC on this, a CEO of that coach or whatever, titles and more external ways of explaining who we are. But if we actually want to go about change, it’s really important to be Able to understand yourself, have a humility to understand where your weaknesses are and, and therefore. And also understand where you might need some help or change or maybe how to better complement your set of skills and personality on your team. So, if you’re an irate, you know, heavy red, well, then maybe you need to bring a little calm, little green type of personality on your. In your group. So, that’s why I asked the question, Ed. I imagine that that should resonate with you.

Edward Nelson: Yeah, yeah. And it’s interesting. You’re talking about the colours and insights and some of the work I’m doing at the moment is around archetypes and looking at it from an archetypal lens. As you know, I think you might have experienced some of that in looking at these as doorways or ways of looking at different aspects of our being that we can access. And when we take an archetypal lens about who I am, we can each access our own version of those because they’re all a part of the rich tapestry of being human. But we all have a unique kind of grouping or constellation of those different parts of ourselves. Red, blue, green, or warrior, learn, lover, nurturer, you know, those things that we can bring together in a certain way. So, we can. And we can dial those up and dial them down. But you can’t, as you say, do that without knowing who you are or where you start. Yeah.

Minter Dial: You end up with some sort of fairly broken or accidental things that happen. So, in, in your work. And this is what I experienced when I came to visit and experience your, Your workshop is this idea of archetypes through a literature. And we, we looked at Prince Hal, if I can recall correctly.

Edward Nelson: Yeah.

Minter Dial: Henry V. Henry V. And what is, you know, he also. Just to cross that over with another element, which is the idea of being able to listen to others, have an ability to have active listening using empathy. And I, I talk about how one of the ways you can actually improve your empathic muscle is by reading literature. So, tell us about your. How you got into the use of literature and specifically in our case, Shakespeare, as a method to help us become better or transform who we are.

Edward Nelson: Yeah. It’s funny, isn’t it? Because most people, you might have been, you know, you’ve been educated in different parts of the world and a lot of people’s experience with Shakespeare in particular is like, onerous, like. And to learn Shakespeare at school by reading Shakespeare is, is almost cruel to take this, this thing that is written on a page, but it was never meant to be taken, you know, When Shakespeare was performed, people didn’t go and read Shakespeare. The only way they experienced Shakespeare was to listen to it and to watch it and to have it. And so, my journey with Shakespeare is probably quite typical in some ways of going through, going, God, this is so boring. I just don’t get it. Until I was 16, I think, and I had to do it the Tempest, and I got into it and I was like, oh, this is quite deep what he’s doing. This is really, really deep. And I think whether it’s Shakespeare or other stories, so I talk about using stories, and there’s sort of three stories that we talk about. There are the stories like Henry V or Shakespeare, and there’s the myths, the Greek myths right through to, you know, Star Wars stories. You know, we love stories. So, following hero’s journey stories or change stories or, you know, Aaron Brockovich stories, Hollywood films, they can be a real, you know, as you say, you could develop empathy from them. But what they do is they take those sort of moments in, of humanity and really focus in on the pressures that people are under, how they cope. And there’s a vicarious way that we can go on that journey with them. So, there’s the use of stories in that sense that we, that provide people a safe way to experience what they might not have in their world. But as a parallel. So, my journey with Shakespeare has been been interesting and difficult, but I think seeing Shakespeare is the way to go. Don’t, don’t read Shakespeare. Don’t get people to read Shakespeare. Get people to tell you about it. Because to get people to, to, to see it. Because if you’ve had kids, you know, I did think about this, you know, the Maharabian rule of what verbal communication is and body language. And we don’t need to get into, you know, the providence of the, of the actual study. But we all know that we understand our children before they use words. You know, there’s these moments before they’re fully verbal that we’re kind of. We’re starting to get a sense of, oh, yeah, you didn’t like that? Oh, you want this? Okay. And they’re not using any words, but we have a relationship with them and we convey meaning in so many ways. So, seeing a story or listening to a story is very different to just reading a story. Although when we read a story, we also activate our imagination. And so, that bit of empathy when we are in a story and our mind is also working to put ourselves in store. What would we do? What’s going to happen Next. And we’re sort of imagining this process is a way of creating engagement. And story is a really safe way for people to experience challenge. So, when I present Henry V to leaders, I don’t therefore have to ask them, tell me what your biggest concerns are. How do you face your challenges? I go, here’s a man faced with some big challenges. And what’s the great thing about that play? As you know from the story we did, was barely any of it is actually about the fighting. It’s all about how Henry responds and makes the decisions that he makes along the way. So, you go on this internal journey. So, I don’t need to hear mentors struggle with whatever leadership journey on. I tell this story, and you will naturally make those connections. And by providing story, you do it really, you create a safe way for people to do that. So, that’s one form of a story. So, it carries someone, and then it opens up possibilities. So, they start to think, you know, oh, that’s a parallel. Maybe I could do it that way. Well, that’s different. That’s why I’ve done it this way. But is it working? No. How did Henry do deal with change? There’s a lot of things that don’t go his way in that story. I mean, it’s a story whether it’s the real truth of the matter. But the. The stories themselves give us a safe way of planning out or going through our own psychological journey that we also must carry out as we go through our actual, you know, making the decisions in the workplace or whatever decisions you have to make difficult in your working life or in your personal life. Am I making sense? There you are. You are.

Minter Dial: One of the things that strikes me about Henry V is the body of work that talks about Prince, how at least you have the opportunity to understand the younger Henry V. And it feels for me that that’s an area that we all, especially men, need to lean into to understand how we got to where we got to.

Edward Nelson: Okay. Yeah, well, yeah. So, you know, we look at these. The sort of three elements of why am I in this particular way, in this point of time? There’s sort of the. There’s the nature argument. I was born this way, you know, and they all come out, the kids all come out in their own personalities. Then there’s the nurture. How much do we follow the family system that we’re in, the culture that we’re in? And then there’s the need. So, how do. How do I confront what’s actually the need in my life right now know, trying to, you know, navigate different changes, diff, you know, teams transformation or AI coming in. There’s a need for me to behave differently. So, all of those things, the nature, nurture, need will play out in my day to day. And if I have been on a journey that got me there, that journey is going to have a particular influence on the way I am. And so, you know, I’m very interested my journey at the moment. So, I use the stories like Henry V. I’m working with the, the Odyssey is one of those stories as well at the moment. Then we use the stories that you would be into. Like I don’t really do the branding stories but you know, companies have their brand story and then they have a story that they tell the public, you know, and they have internal stories. So, I’m working with a fast-growing fintech company. They do acquisition and they’ve got to get their story right. Now who are we now that we are a conglomerate of amalgamation of six businesses opposed to two. You know, so there’s that story. So, we’ve got to craft a story that we’re, we’ve creating as a business which is a different kind of story to Henry V. And then there’s the personal story that I tell myself about who I am. So, you know, you asked me who am I? And I, you know, that’s, that’s, who am I? You know, I’m a living beating heart that, that wants to love and give and, and I think we all have a need to give back to the world. You know, I was listening to your, a recent podcast of yours and it, she was talking about getting people back to work. Who was that?

Minter Dial: That was Julianne Miles.

Edward Nelson: Yeah. Yeah, Julianne too. So, you know, in that personal journey of the stories that people tell themselves. So, those are the three elements of stories that I look at. But I think the thing that I’m particularly interested with that is that sort of element that Julianne was talking about about self confidence, about the ability to be in myself while everything in the world is telling me other things. So, how can I be what for a better word could be self differentiated? Who. So, our journey to be fully ourselves is a really powerful, can be really powerful gift. This is, this is what I’m working on at the moment. You know, call me in, you know, 30 years time and we’ll see how it’s worked out.

Minter Dial: Yeah, I had a lady on my podcast who said, and I thought it was brilliantly spoken. It takes more than a lifetime to get to know yourself.

Edward Nelson: Yeah.

Minter Dial: And it feels like if we live in a world where everyone’s demanding authenticity and transparency. My observation is oftentimes when we’re asking for it, it’s because we don’t have it ourselves.

Edward Nelson: Yeah, well, I, you know, I, I think, you know, I’m a. I’m a big fan of. Of sort of parts of us. Right. There are parts of us. There are, you know, we, we can be red, we can bleed blue, we can be a bit green, we can be an actor. You know, you’re, you know, you, You’re a singer, you’ve done, you know, you’ve been a hairdresser, you’ve. There’s different parts of who we are.

Minter Dial: I’ve worked with hairdressers. I haven’t yet cut hair.

Edward Nelson: Oh, you’ve. Thanks for clarifying that. So, working, you know, we work in different ways, we do these different things. And then I, I think where I. My view on authenticity is very tr. It’s. It’s very tricky. And I. And I think that it. It almost. It. It could potentially, like Julianne talks about the thing that we have to find out a passion if we don’t find. And people are waiting for their passion and until they get it, they might not really get behind it. Follow your interest and see where that takes you. Similarly, with authenticity, I’m trying to be authentic, and I do, I really know, because authentically, part of me just wants to be in bed right now. Authentically, part of me actually wants to be swimming in the lake, to be honest. You know, part of me loves talking to you. So, what’s the authentic bit? And, And I think we also find relief in other aspects if the thing about ourselves as sort of diamonds with many facets that. I’m turning this particular facet to you today and I actually like that you’re asking something slightly different from me because I don’t know this part of myself. So, I find authenticity really tricky. And I think, I think we can get a bit stuck when we demand authenticity because for some people, they, they might be devastated in their home life and they’re coming to work so they don’t have to be authentic with their pain. Right.

Minter Dial: So true.

Edward Nelson: And. And I, you know, or for. For many reasons, it’s like, you know, you might hate your boss now. Do you want to be authentic about that?

Minter Dial: Yeah. Give him the finger.

Edward Nelson: Yeah. Now that might feel good in the moment, but what are you taking care of is a lot of things and, you know, we are. This idea of being. I guess it also comes back to this other. This other stuff, I’m bouncing up against the moment about me as an individual, whereas I’m a part of a system that’s engaging with processes. So, this question of who am I? Is different with you, Minter, right now, based on your questions. And I’m looking at a camera and looking at you, and I’ve got a microphone up there, so I’m in a different place, and I feel a certain need to perform or present some ideas in an interesting way to you. And then there’s another part that if. When I go out and we’re not talking, I’ll be different with myself. I might just take a bit of quiet time and. And I wouldn’t say either of those is a lie about who I am. So, it’s. It’s tricky. And I think some people are really relieved to not be some parts of themselves when they show up in public or in a relationship. Yeah.

Minter Dial: This is a topic I’m regularly discussing and writing about, and it does pull up the idea of the integrity story, the idea of an integer. So, the integer is a diamond with multiple facets. To what extent are you aware of your own facets and how do they contribute to that diamond? Because every diamond has its own particularities. Like you said at the very beginning, we are all individuals, and you have your world experience, which is no one else can have or take from you. And when one has, let’s say, a darker side, the issue is to what extent you embrace it as an individual without having to show it with transparency in the. The. I feel like as a society, we have run up this flag post of, you know, you need to be authentic. And I want total transparency. A. When people ask for transparency, I tend to think it’s a political statement. When people ask for authenticity, I think it’s also a reflection of their lack of authenticity. And in a society where we ask everyone else to be something that we’re not prepared to do, well, that’s hocus pocus. And I think it’s contributed to the amount of mental health disorder we have in our society.

Edward Nelson: Well, that’s a whole rabbit hole, but I don’t know if I’m qualified to go down that one. Yeah.

Minter Dial: Is that. Is that the lawyer speaking? The lawyer in.

Edward Nelson: Yeah, probably. There’s a part of me that goes, oh, that’s scary. But, you know, part of me that love, you know, thinks it’s a really interesting and important topic because so. So, we talk about integrity and the self, And so, the diamond. And we have. And there is I mean, maybe responsibility is too big a word, but actually if we don’t take responsibility and we have parts of our diamond that are cutting things up in a way that’s harmful either to ourself or others. Like, you know, if we have addictions or something like that, that we might be harming ourselves, harming ourselves, harming others. You know, sending ripples out that we don’t mean to. And we’ve all got. We’ve all done things that we’re probably not proud of, so we have to go lightly with that. But I think part of it is we do have. So, we do have a responsibility to know who we are and our impact on the world. But some people aren’t going to take that responsibility. And then the thing that I’m grappling with or interested in is the other bit of self-awareness, which is. And I think this is where authenticity and transparency. I think there’s a desire for trust. I want to know where I stand with you. I need to. Can I. Who are you? Can we build? So, there is a need for trust. I absolutely get that. And there’s a bit. Another part. Do you know what? I’m actually. Am I allowed to have my authentic response to this moment? But we might have been brought up or we live in a system where I’m, you know, if we look about, you know, if we open the door on sexuality or a whole lot of things that aren’t allowed or there’s particular ways that are allowed in particular ways that aren’t allowed that all of a sudden there are, there are things that we might be feeling that we don’t allow. So, we might be a little bit aware of them, but we’re also against ourselves. So, in my last in, in my more recent blog, I was talking about polarities. And we can have, we can have a polarity in ourselves of going. I really feel that. But you’re not allowed to feel that, you know, and, and that courage. And it can feel like a very. Maybe speaking personally, it can feel like of quite a big journey to validate a feeling or an experience that feels in lots of ways disavowed or unallowed, whether that and that and weirdly, we might be projecting that onto work, but it might be something that we learned. It’s actually fine at work, but I’ve come carrying a story or it isn’t. We are sure that isn’t fine at work. And that’s where some people might have to make decisions about what’s the right place for them to Be. So, there’s the diamond where we, we have a responsibility to know ourselves because it’s, it’s, it’s in the world we’re interacting with others and, and there’s the bit of us that. There’s the self-awareness. So, like it’s an absolute blind spot. And then there might be things that we can see but we’re also not accepting.

Minter Dial: Like chips on shoulders.

Edward Nelson: Say more.

Minter Dial: Well, when you have an issue that maybe as a child you never won the cup, you’re always second or whatever story you carrying with you can come and resurface because you haven’t wanted to come to terms with it, you’ve put it in a. In a black box and by hook and my crook, it sort of reappears somewhere.

Edward Nelson: Yeah, yeah. You know, especially if you’re talking about I was. I never got the same love as my other brother. For example.

Minter Dial: For example. Which I’m re watching the Crown and there’s. It’s lots of sibling things like that. When you’re talking about polarities, it’s an interesting topic. I mean, obviously we live in a very polarising society. In your work about harnessing the power of polarities, to what extent are polarities problems and why is the distinction important in change, organisational change?

Edward Nelson: Well, I think at some level polarities are unavoidable. So, we could put a value judgement on it, I think, but we get stuck in them for a number of reasons and, and I think if we’re getting hypnotised into a particular polarity or if we’re getting really stuck or bought into a particular side of an argument, that of course we can see the damage of polarised thinking in lots of ways. You know, the real us them and then us them escalating into. To violence. Right. That’s a. That’s a one particular version of it and that’s more likely to happen when we really get stuck in it. If we just pop into it and then can pop out of it, then it’s. We’re less likely to. But the things that keep us stuck are fear and uncertainty. As someone with a background in conflict resolution and mediation, that the absolute fundamental problem with people moving through conflict, from my point of view, is that at the very moment that the world is asking them and there’s a change that’s required, a change means facing the unknown. The moment I face the unknown, I am frightened. When I am frightened, I find comfort in what I know. And what I know is the past. And what I know is a particular viewpoint or a belief system that I have about how the world works. And so, I get more entrenched in my previous beliefs in the face of uncertainty, which at the very moment when I need to let go of my. Is the very moment I actually need to let go of them is the moment I cling more tightly. And, you know, you’re. So, this is where I think. So, I have some questions about empathy, which is what sort of looking forward to coming onto this podcast with you about empathy. So, this is where empathy can be really important, right? To, to. To an extent that we. Then if that person can find some sense of self and being seen that’s outside of the polarity, then they might have space to shift from it. And so, polarities arise. Like if I say the colour white, probably the first colour that comes to your head.

Minter Dial: A black and white shirt.

Edward Nelson: Yeah, right, right. But you don’t think of charcoal or silver or grey. It’s. If we say. If we say something the opposite, you know, love, hate. We think in these polarities arise almost unavoidably or necessarily so. And I think, you know, there’s a. There’s a way of exploring that that says that this is a part of the change process. And so, it’s almost like we have to welcome them in. I know that if I take a particular stand on a political issue that I know I have to meet the other side. And this is what, you know, Gandhi’s sort of famous hymns of practise was of Satyagaha and he’d sort of come over to the other side and argue with them against his own point of view and then invite and say, okay, great, now I’ve done. Which is a version of empathy. And now I’ve done that. Come with me, right? Come with me. Come on to my. And. And we. And then you’re separating the people from the problem. But in a way you need the polarity to arise before you can start having that dialogue. The challenge becomes. When the polarisation is. Gets. Becomes entrenched because. And then we get stuck. And then we get stuck in fear. We’re not thinking creatively about something. So, you know, and, and again, like I shared, there’s a polarity in me about some things. You know, I’ve. So, we’ve got polarities existing internally, we’ve got them having in. You know, we can talk about what we have in common today and then we can talk about where we might be, there might be things where we think opposite and then that can happen at an interpersonal level and then it can have happen at a social level and, and we have tribes, you know, you had Seth Godin on there talking, on talking about tribes. We have people like us. It’s one of his famous expressions. You know, people like us do things like this And so, are you either us or them. And it’s human nature. I don’t think we can fight it and we aren’t just our group but we can make a choice to be in our group. So, when I, and, and I think when people get afraid of the polarity is when you’re more likely to get stuckness and there’ll all be some that make that, that push our buttons and find our edges. But when I work as a facilitator, so I’m brought in for that very reason of my unstuckness with particular dynamics in a team or in an organisation so that I won’t be. But those teams and those organisations do not act in a vacuum outside of the society that they’re in or the culture that they’re in. So, those will also be encouraging particular viewpoints.

Minter Dial: My monkey brain says when you practise, like I’ve written about empathy and my wife on occasion will say well that’s not very empathic of you. When you practise the art of mediating others, it’s sometimes hard to, to do it on yourself, even though you know all the tricks of the trade, if you will. It feels for me that that stuckness I, or certainly in my vocabulary equates to existential crisis that the more you’re stuck on it, the more it becomes existential. Your need for it to exist because through it I exist and the, the, the, the, the equilibrium I’m frequently trying to figure out is the idea of being adaptable, flexible, going to the other polarity as you call it, and yet having a backbone. Because if I am supposed to be flexible and listen to everything and get rid of stuckiness and, and, and hold every idea lightly, well, do I actually exist underneath that?

Edward Nelson: Yeah. And what do I do with my preferences and my beliefs? Yeah, yeah, yes. And so, that’s that, that comes back to that self-differentiation and that’s where empathy can be problematic, especially for a leader. You know, in the story of Henry V there are sort of. We break it down into the five acts. You know, the first act is like vision and purpose. Am I doing the right thing? Is this the right thing to do? And making that statement and finding that. And as a leader it’s like are you connected to your purpose and your vision and have you grown up, you know, if we go back to Henry IV and Prince how, you know, and you look at how he was seen as completely, you know, Prince Harry unwelcome on the throne and then. And his transformation to get there, you know. And there’s a scene in Act 4 of Henry IV where he puts the crown on before he thinks his father’s died. And he puts the crown on and has a moment and he feels literally the weight of it and feels the weight of responsibility and I think that calls up something in him that he kind of knew was coming, but he has a visceral, a bodied experience of that, of that weight. And he sympathises with his dad. He gets it. He goes, oh, my, I see how impossible position he was put into. Wow. And he thinks that more about than just himself and that’s that growing up we spend, you know, our team, you know, 20s and stuff. This is what I want to do. I want to go snowboard. I’m jumping out of a helicopter in Alaska. I did that was great. You know, been travelling all over the world. I do all these things that I want to do. I want to have all these experiences. And then there’s a point in our lives, often kids, and we go, ah, someone else’s. Now that’s very Western. I’m not sure that that’s necessarily. You know, Australians are phenomenal travellers because we’re very Western in our thinking, very individualistic. So, we’re all out getting experiences and we’re also, you know, materially quite wealthy. So, that’s. That contributes to that. But I think there are other things and I. Polarity that’s going off on a tangent here into.

Minter Dial: It’s all good, it’s all good.

Edward Nelson: I. I went to a workshop, a conflict workshop in Australia in 2006 or something like that. And the opening ceremony was talking about honouring the ancestors and the Aboriginal ancestors and all of this. Now there was a rumour in my family, my family were free settlers first. Some first white. Some part of my family is in fact one of the potentially the first white man ever to climb up Uluru is in my. Is my great, great grandfather Barry. He was the mapper. He did the sort of the stenographer mapping out Australia. And you know, there’s. I. I don’t know what that much about their history, but I was sitting there going, oh, these are the people who transgressed on Aboriginal land. I don’t think they did it violently in a sort of that in a way, but they went out and they took what they wanted with it, thinking it was just theirs, right? And, and I’m sitting there going, oh, I’m. I feel really like this is, this is not a good thing. My ancestors were, were baddies in this particular context. And then we listened to this woman, an Aboriginal woman who was from the stolen generation, which was happening right up until I was born in 1974, right? So, they were taking Aboriginal children away from their mothers and their families and putting them in white homes up until 1974. And then I’m sitting here and this woman is talk. This Aboriginal woman is talking about worshipping Christianity and God. And I’m sitting there and I’m just cannot put those two boxes together because it was in the name of God that so many of those, what I would say, you know, painful atrocities happened. You know, I, that’s not to deem, you know, I, I don’t. It’s, you know, we use religions like any technology. We, we can use it for good and we can use it for, for ill. But at that time, it just didn’t make sense to me. Me. And I, and I got up and I said, I don’t, I don’t understand what you’re doing. And I said, I don’t understand why I, you know, I did this great sort of mid-20s thing. I don’t understand why I should feel guilty. You know, I didn’t do anything. I’ve, you know, I’m, you know, Australian, I’m white. I didn’t choose these things. There’s nothing wrong with me. I don’t know why I should feel guilty. I’ve got all these privileges. But. And this Aboriginal guy on the outside of the group comes and goes, you’re not privileged. You have no idea where your heart is. You have no idea who you are. You don’t know where you belong, you don’t know where you fit in. You think you have privilege. You have no idea what privilege is. What all this other stuff says. I do have all these, you know, if you go down the literature, I’ve got all these other privileges. And he’s sitting there going, no, no, no. And I’m going. And then, and the facilitator asked him to come in, goes, come in. He goes, I’m not coming in there to join the Centre. I’m not going to come and be in with you lot. I’m really happy out here on the edges. And. Yeah, yeah. And he just went, yeah, you’re, you’re a kid. You have no idea. You have no idea where Your heart is. And the funny thing is he turned out to be my bunk mate in my dorm and we, he became my mentor. He’s passed away now. Yeah, he used to call me big fellow in, in his, in Aboriginal Nigel. And he was. Yeah, we just, it was just great. We had a really good bond And so, there was a moment of polarisation and then this bit about. And then a huge coming together going, you know, I’m not, I, he, you know, he’s. I’m not just Aboriginal. I mean he was fairly light skinned anyway, so he wouldn’t necessarily always be seen as Aboriginal, but it was. We have all these parts and we can get stuck in one part of ourselves. And in that moment, it was great to have this part of myself that was walking around as sort of this enlightened, woke up young guys. Proud.

Minter Dial: Shamed.

Edward Nelson: Yeah. And then being shamed for it. But then also seeing the, the limitation of that viewpoint and then having the loving conversation afterwards that took us both beyond the polarity to a connection. And he became a really, really good friend of mine. So, that the polarities are important, they need to be surfaced, and we need to find people because not everybody and places that can somehow take us beyond that. I mean laughter can do it as well. You know, I like to bring a bit of fun into groups. So, when I’m facilitating there’s a couple of different things. Empathy has its place, fun has its place, you know, creating space. People refer to me as being very spacious in the way that I hold that because I believe in getting them out there. I believe in dialogue. I’m sort of a liberal in that sense of getting people to speak. I’m not really. I like to have platforms, and I see you’ve had a lot of different voices on here. You know, a platform. I think we need to be able to hear voices because they’re still going to be there. We can say that they’re bad, but they’ll still be there. And unless they’re given if, you know, I wouldn’t have had the chance for my view of privilege to be challenged if I didn’t voice it. Now I’m lucky enough, safe enough, privileged enough to also be able to hear the challenge. And so, some people feel so threatened by the challenge that they can’t step outside of it. And that, and that’s the thing that we got to. We got. We have to be empathic toward I suppose.

Minter Dial: Well, it’s, it conjures up this notion of identities that therefore become existential if you step on them. In, in the words you talked about humour or fun. I frequently talk about play, yeah, but I usually don’t talk about Henry V. I, I talk about the idea of play, but not necessarily because play, all play is fun. I think playing rugby is not all about fun. I think playing is often an ability for us to go back to some sort of more instinctual parts of ourselves, allow ourselves to be faced with hardship and. Which can be fulfilling without necessarily having a drop of happiness. What does that conjure up for you?

Edward Nelson: Oh, it’s hard, you know, I, I’m just thinking when I jump in, I’m lucky enough to live where there’s a lake, so I go swimming in the lake and I try and go all year round and couple days ago when I went in, it wasn’t fun. I didn’t enjoy. It was cold and it was bracingly cold and I was like, I don’t remember it being this difficult last year. I don’t remember feeling this threatened by the cold. I don’t remember feeling this weak in the face of this cold. And I nearly didn’t go in and I was like, this isn’t. Last year it felt like I was up for the challenge and this year I just don’t feel like I’m up for the challenge. And I, I told myself a story that I’ll feel better when I get out and. And I went, just go. And I end up doing two laps of the lake and I was just made a commitment to do one, but I end up doing two just because I knew that September is a lot warmer than it’s going to be. So, I climatized myself and I was fine and I felt really good afterwards. I don’t know if that’s the same thing, but you know, if I think about rugby, one of, you know, my son’s just started, you know, he’s just played his first match. He’s six, right. He’s just played his first match on the weekend. He scored two tries.

Minter Dial: Nice.

Edward Nelson: He loved it. He really, you know, he enjoyed it. Right. You know, they’ve got tags, they don’t allow it. In some ways it’s harder to tackle. They just pull the tags off. They’re not allowed to. He’d love it if they were doing tackling, but. But I guess for him it’s still fun. But I think there’s a couple of things going on in playing sports, which is when we play with the team, we’re playing something bigger than just ourselves, we’re challenged. So, it’s hard. There’s spontaneity, you have to think you’re not sure where the other player is going to go. So, it’s calling us into the moment. So, if you think about play as something that brings us in, it doesn’t necessarily be fun. But I guess when we laugh, we’re moved by the thing that’s happening in the moment, to a joyous state that makes us forget about the future. And then at the same time, when we’re playing rugby or we’re working with that, we’re focused in the moment, we talk about peak or flow experiences. So, anything that can give people that sense of themselves, and then they are disidentified with their problems or disidentified with their need to then measure themselves against somebody else in that moment. And if you can get a team to do that together, they’re far more likely to see a different way through the problem. But a problem that teens will encounter is that their ability to access an alternative or to think differently becomes thwarted by the politics and. And the fear and the stories, and they get entrenched in them that make work. And then we have to create experiences for them to feel safe, to step outside of that. And we can do that by listening, but we can do it through play. We can do it by giving the team a peak experience of some kind, a challenge, and then we can get them to think differently. And we can also just use story. We could tell a story. You know, there’s. I mean, there’s loads of bits from the Odyssey. You know, the Odyssey is sort of the grandest story of them all. And the thing about stories, it’s funny, we tell some of the. A lot of the stuff is like the work that you’ve been asking about is the work I do with one of my associates, Olivier Mythodrama, where we. We go in and we tell Shakespeare. And one of the other stories is Parsifal. And we tell it over three days to an engineering firm. And within the first, you know, it surprises me every time within one or two sentences, or some of them are still on their phones, but almost all of them are. Like it. Like, it taps into something really deep. And the beauty of a story that we’re being told as opposed to a film that we’re watching, is that I ask you, fill in the blank. I can say he walked into a classroom or he walked into school, or he came home and he opened the door. I don’t have to tell you the colour of the door. I don’t have to tell you what the School looks like you’re doing that. You’ve got enough of those references. You’re creating that world. And we do that with books and when people tell stories. But when people tell stories, they’re here in the flesh and I. And they’re there. And so, we’re like kids. We’re taking meaning from their presence as well as from the words they say because.

Minter Dial: Speak to the art of understatement.

Edward Nelson: Say more. Oh, I get about not over explaining.

Minter Dial: Good literature can’t explain everything. It needs to allow the actor to feel that they own the agency, to be within it and then attribute the colour of the door And so, on. I did want to. I. I’ve had multiple great rugby players on my podcast and. And the thing, the word that we haven’t spoken, but I think is also entirely necessary, both in business and specifically for. For us, for society and for raising children, is the adoption of risk taking, because the hardship of diving into a lake. By the way, the woman I had on my show last week talked about diving into the Atlantic City, the Atlantic Ocean, up, up in north northeast United States, and we had a similar sort of vibe going on about chilly waters. But the idea of being able to adopt or accept risk. We’ve mentioned a lot more times the word safety. And I think that our challenge is that we’ve kind of made so many things innocuous, including the things we can’t say, that this is where we end up with a black hole of major polarities that people feel entrenched on but they can’t talk about it And therefore, that becomes a raging zit that needs to burst.

Edward Nelson: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, probably the, you know, the interesting one, and you’re speaking right back to this idea of self-differentiation, because if I can, if I’m able to find a home in myself as a leader, I can make statements that are not welcome. But if I feel, if I’ve learned in my system of upbringing that I need to keep people happy, to keep the peace, even if it failed 10 times over or a million times over growing up, I could never keep my dad calm or whatever it was, we’re still trying. If I get my sense of self from that as a leader, how am I going to take a stand in an organisation that needs a stand to be taken? So, yeah, and it comes back to being risk taking is something I can do when I’ve got a good sense of self. It’s also a bit like relationships. I was listening to the woman, eft woman, Sue Johnson, talking about, you know, it’s weirdly to say that monogamy is actually where most people find the most rewarding sex. It’s not about the thing. You know, we talk a lot about polyamory and people going off and having exciting sex adventures, which is really great if you’re locked down and you’re numb and we have a numb society because we’re not allowed to listen to our hearts. So, great for that wakes up. But if you want long term, one of that bit between risk and safety, it’s like, if I feel safe with my partner, I can take a risk with my partner. Partner if I feel safe with my team. Now, the challenge you’re talking about is slightly different. It’s like, what if I can’t find safety? I still got to take a risk. And that’s the edge. And then that’s when it’s like, well, what? That’s when the self defer, the sense of self that I can take a risk that becomes really important. And so, that’s where the limits of empathy come in. I think when we’re trying to take care of all the other people, we can hear that some people are going to be upset because the fact is, as a leader, if you make a change and we’re talking about facilitating change. Beginning of Henry, you know, he gets. The second one is you meet all of the people in opposition, and two of the groups in opposition are on his own side. One of them is the people who stab him in the back. And the other ones are the people who are like, I don’t really care what we do. I’m just in it for me. So, before we even meet the French that he’s out to conquer, he’s got people on his own team going to stab him in the back, including his best friends. And then we’ve also got parts of ourselves that don’t want to change, but we don’t like change. No, you cannot actually facilitate. You cannot make a change and keep people happy, because people feel comfort in the status quo. And if you make a change, it’s. You’re disrupting the status quo, And therefore, you are the enemy. Even if it’s good, I’m not going to.

Minter Dial: Like you the story.

Edward Nelson: Listen, Moneyball. If you see the film Moneyball, Perfect. Have you seen it? Yeah. You know, Brad Pitt is sitting there at the beginning and they’re all going, he’s going now. And he sits there and he just gets flack. He just. The system goes, don’t speak. What you’re saying is heresy. Statistics to lead us through baseball. I’ve got my eye, I’ve got my gut feeling. It’s, you know, and we’re. It’s really interesting, this challenge.

Minter Dial: It is another great call to action for people to check out. So, speaking of which, how can people check out what you do, your writing bring you in to facilitate an awesome explanation of Henry V and how we could all change properly through a great story.

Edward Nelson: Great. Well, my work, I’ve got. I’m re revamping my YouTube channel, which is Facilitating Change. I have a blog called Facilitating Change on WordPress and my name, edwardjnelson.com that’s got a bit more about what I do. And then I work with a number of, you know, bigger providers as well. So, I work with, you know, companies up to two and a half thousand people and then when it gets, you know, up into 100,000. Yeah. Then, then I usually would probably work with some of my bigger partners like Olivier Mythodrama or Arcadia. Those are some of the people I work with. Yeah.

Minter Dial: Get, get the team. Ed, it’s been lovely having you on. Great chat. I look forward to continuing to chat. Maybe next time over a beer or dinner.

Edward Nelson: Yeah, great. Thanks, Minter.